


A Vision Softly Creeping

by neurotrophicfactors



Series: To Live Without A Lifeline [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Series, post-briarwoods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:49:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neurotrophicfactors/pseuds/neurotrophicfactors
Summary: "I was a fisherman for a while; I didn't do anything." - A study of the first year following Percival's escape from the Briarwoods.





	

**Author's Note:**

> (Sweats) I haven't written anything for fun in so long. Also I am kicking myself for naming this story after a line from The Sound of Silence because I am constantly making "hello, darkness, my old friend" jokes, but it was too perfect. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it! And by enjoy it I mean I hope it breaks your heart!

He can scarcely remember the last time his hands were clean. They’re instruments of labour, his hands; scarred and calloused with dirt beneath what little remains of his fingernails. They’re bitten down to the quick – a childhood habit he conquered years ago and regained in recent months. Every time he brings his fingers to his mouth, he hears a small voice chastise him; but the voice exists only in his head now, and it is gradually growing smaller. Memory is a fickle, and frighteningly fragile thing.

At first, Percival wondered if Captain Rylen regretted taking him aboard his vessel. It wasn’t as if Percival was particularly dull or clumsy – in fact he was rather bright and deft of hand, well-accustomed to meticulous work – but he could not shake the notion that he was more than the Captain bargained for. He had not told the Captain who he was, at least not entirely. He bit his tongue after the first name passed his lips. However, there were mannerisms that were so deeply ingrained in him that it was impossible to hide the nobility of his birth.

Rylen had to know that he was damaged; he had told Percival, after all, how he found the boy barely conscious in the river, body riddled with burns and cuts that had sealed in the icy mountain water. But he didn’t think that Rylen was quite prepared for what that damage entailed: the way Percival seemed to exist in a haze, so haunted by his own ghosts that he imitated them in his waking hours; the way his sleep was pierced by screams and fits of violent thrashing. Rylen was not young, but he was no father and was not used to offering comfort to victims of night terrors. He was a kind man, but not a nurturing one. He could make a serviceable poultice and bandage Percival’s fingers when they trembled so hard they caught on fishhooks, but he did not know how to heal a human soul. The best he could do was keep Percival busy.

The first time Rylen pulled into port at Drynna, Percival collapsed to the dock, knees bruising against the hard wood as he struggled to breathe. Between shallow gasps, he managed to choke out, “Please, don’t leave me!” and instantly regretted his words as the image of blood on snow flashed before his eyes, pushing bile into his throat.

Rylen seized his upper arm and tugged him roughly to his feet, his grip tightening as Percival’s legs threatened to give out beneath him. “Get a hold of yourself, boy,” Rylen snapped. “I need my full crew with me when we ship out to the Lucidian tomorrow morning.” Then he shoved a pouch full of coins into Percival’s bewildered hands. “Here: your pay. Now go get yourself some real clothes and stop mooching off of my men. We meet back at the docks in two hours.”

That evening, the crew stayed in a tavern and Captain Rylen bought them all a round of drinks, including Percival. And as their plates were cleared away and they neared the bottom of their tankards, Rylen leaned in and suggested that Percival find himself the company of a nice lass for the night, “or a lad, if you prefer. It’ll be the last time you see anyone but our ugly faces for weeks.”

Percival did not take his advice. Even the thought of baring himself to another person sent shivers down his spine; it was too vulnerable. But still it mattered that Rylen had said it, and as Percival lay in his bed later that night – blessedly alone – he finally began to believe that he was a member of the crew.

With that budding sense of belonging, Percival found purpose. He was not a changed man by any means. There was no rapid recovery or sudden urge to bond with his crewmates. He was no more whole than he was before, no less broken. He simply began to find uses for himself rather than doing only what he was told. He modified the pulley system for their fishing nets to make it more efficient. He built a snare for the sails that could be triggered in the event of a storm so that they could be drawn to the mast quickly and safely. He designed and constructed a device like an oversized crossbow that could shoot harpoons.

He still only remembers the last year in bits and pieces, important days and moments piercing through the fog in much the same way that sunlight spears through the clouds on a windy autumn day. He remembers the first time he shot the harpoon bow; the way the crew cheered as it punctured flesh and blubber and sent up a spray of red as the beast thrashed in the water. He remembers reluctantly teaching the crew to dance before the ship docked in Drynna for Winter’s Crest. He remembers getting lost in town when he saw a flash of auburn hair that looked too much like _hers_ and ran for his life in a blind panic. He remembers Rylen getting him drunk and convincing him to sing along with the crew.

He doesn’t remember the last conversation he had with his parents or what colour dress Vesper wore to dinner that final night. He doesn’t remember if the twins started kicking each other beneath the table or if Mother’s stern glare kept their feet still. Memory is a fickle, and frighteningly fragile thing.

But when Percival goes to sleep at night, he remembers the blood. He remembers the gurgling sound as a bolt punched through his older brother’s throat. He remembers Ludwig and Oliver lying still in the darkness, unresponsive to his cries, and the sight of a severed hand in the hallway, small and delicate; adorned with the ring Mother gave to Whitney on the twins’ last birthday. He remembers the near-comical angle of the blade jutting through his father’s chest and the scarlet stain that cascaded down his front as his mouth opened and closed in startled agony. He remembers letting go of Cassandra’s hand as she stumbled in the snow and the way she called out to him for help when he drew ahead of her. He remembers every sick thud as all three arrows found a home in her back and the way his eyes burned as he turned to leave her corpse behind him.

It’s at this point when he usually wakes, but tonight has different plans for Percival. Instead of the underside of the stairwell leading to the upper deck, Percival sees only swirling darkness, thick like billowing smoke.

“ _Percival_.”

A hand reaches toward him and then a face forms out of the amorphous night, tipped with a long, cruel beak, like a raven’s. Percival recoils as the hand draws close, eyeing the creature warily.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“ _What I want is trivial in comparison to what I have to offer,_ ” the darkness replies. It begins to coil around him loosely, a boa constrictor preparing to strangle its prey.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to hear your terms,” Percival says, “in detail.”

“ _You have been wronged, Percival_ ,” the darkness says. “ _Betrayed and broken. They took everything you loved. What if I told you that I have a solution? A way to put it right_.”

Percival closes his eyes, inhaling before he lets his breath out in a long sigh. He thinks of the stories his mother used to read to him as a child; how, in desperate times, the hero would be tempted by the evils of the world. Every time one of those heroes made a deal, it always went horribly wrong for them.

“ _The Briarwoods, Stonefell, Anders, Ripley. What they did was unforgivable. They all deserve to pay._ ”

But then: Percival has already lost everything and he is no hero.

Percival brings a hand to his chin and stares into the raven’s empty eye sockets. “I’m listening,” he says.

And if the darkness could, Percival swears that it _smiles_.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I cannot leave this storyline alone, I am continuing it in other short stories. Likely, there will be two more. The name for this series is from the song Earth by Sleeping At Last.


End file.
